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By the numbers: Shaw workforce shakeup just the latest of many transformations

Feb 15, 2018 | 10:30 AM

CALGARY — Shaw Communications Inc. said Thursday that 25 per cent of its workforce had chosen to accept a voluntary buyout, although it was targeting just 10 per cent. The buyouts were offered as part of its Total Business Transformation plan unveiled Jan. 30.

Here’s a by-the-numbers look at some of the transformations that have shaken the company since it enrolled its first cable TV customer in Edmonton 47 years ago:

3,300: The number of Shaw employees who have decided to take a voluntary buyout package.

650: The number of employees who were expected to take a buyout, based on 10 per cent of the 6,500 eligible employees.

1,700: The number of Shaw employees impacted by a corporate restructuring that concluded in 2015.

200: The reduction in employees due to a restructuring in 2016 after Shaw bought Freedom Mobile (formerly Wind Mobile) and sold Shaw Media Inc.

$2.3 billion: The price Shaw received for its ViaWest unit, a Denver-based computer centre operator, in August 2017.

$2.65 billion: The price paid by Corus Entertainment Inc. to buy Shaw Media Inc. in April 2016.

$1.6 billion: The purchase price Shaw paid for Wind Mobile in a deal completed in March 2016.

10,000: The number of cable TV customers Shaw, then called Capital Cable TV, connected in its first year after starting up in Edmonton in 1971.

3.2 million: The number of customers now served by Shaw Communications, including 1.9 million subscribers to Shaw internet and more than one-million Shaw home phone customers.

$1.25 billion: Revenue reported by Shaw in its latest quarter ended Nov. 30, 2017.

79 per cent: The percentage of Class A voting shares held by the Shaw Family Living Trust, giving founder JR Shaw and his heirs firm control of the company.

860,000: The number of kilometres of fibre cable Shaw has installed across Canada.

 

Dan Healing, The Canadian Press

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